


Night Shift

by bespectacledwallflower



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Amnesia, Car Accidents, Dog BB-8, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Language, Moving In Together, Not in Space, One Shot, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-05-31 10:49:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6467299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bespectacledwallflower/pseuds/bespectacledwallflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A nurse develops an attachment to a John Doe and pays frequent, often uneventful visits.<br/>(cw: car accidents, amnesia,)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A dependency on anything as a person in healthcare was frowned upon, but coffee was possibly the one true exception. Dameron certainly had one, and he was feeling its withdrawing power tonight. Or today, rather—he wouldn't be off 'til 5:30am, and he still had three hours or so to go. At least this ward was usually pretty quiet. Maybe he could slip off for just a few minutes, grab a cup, check in on that kid again...

Poe Dameron was a very good nurse. His ease with people and knowing what a person meant when they spoke meant that he was a patient favorite, and he was good about not slacking when he made his rounds. But lately, he'd been making his visits more and more brief where he could afford to skimp. They'd gotten this guy in, couldn't be more than twenty-five, and when they looked for records, absolutely nothing came up on him. The police had already gotten involved, and they had to reach back into missing persons reports filed when John Doe would've been an infant. His room sat always in eerie silence, broken only by the hum of machinery, the rise and fall of his chest, and the occasional raspy sigh.   
(Whenever this happened during Poe's visits, his heart would jump at the ready to ply the kid with questions, but every time John Doe's face would relax into blankness again and the moment would pass.)  
And Poe just felt so sorry for the guy. Lots of patients didn't always get a lot of visitors, but most times someone had to show up eventually. At the very least, the patient would have a name. When John Doe woke up (if he woke up at all), he'd be identity-less and stuck with the bill. Poe told himself he went in so often so that there would be at least one person appearing to care for him—and that was his job after all, wasn't it? That room (2187) was like a different headspace than the rest of his route, and the only variable up in the air was the distant possibility of being the first person John Doe saw waking up.

Poe Dameron was a very good nurse.


	2. next day, 3:32am

Thoughts had swum through his cloudy brain like vegetables in soup for a little while then, indistinguishable from the rest, but a jolt sent a cracking noise through his skull that dispelled all thought. An image formed instead: one tennis shoe, then another just behind it, pushing toward him faster and faster.  
He could hear mumbled curses and wondered where they were coming from before he found he was being pulled up from the hard floor by two hands. It became clearer what hurt where: bandages wound around his head pressed into a deep gash; a long slice down his shoulder blade stung as he leaned against the hands holding him; an arm in a cast held a dull ache of bruises. His body slumped against the owner of the shoes and the curses and the hands as dead weight; he couldn't seem to make his muscles respond quick as he could think them. But on their own, they acted, and he found himself able to stand.

"How long have you been awake?" pressed the voice.  
He blinked, refocused. A pair of wide brown eyes startled him, and he started to stitch together the isolated elements into one thing: a man was holding him steady and asking him a question he did not know the answer to.   
"...Huh?"  
"Can you remember when you woke up? Was anybody there with you?"  
It was as if someone had turned on every light in the house at once. The details all seemed to reach out and touch him—the background whirr of monitors, the blue glow of the flourescents, the wrinkle that came between the man's brow.  
"N...no, this is...I wasn't. Awake," he stumbled.   
His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. His body felt heavy on his feet. It allowed itself to be set down on the bed, inclined up, as the man leading it coaxed with little affirmations: "Alright, here we go—just gotta—yeah, there we go—"  
"Why am I here?"  
The man—he began to realize that this was his nurse—glanced at him, glanced away, took a calculated breath. 

"There was an accident. Car you were riding in drifted off the road, hit the shoulder, overcorrected and...turned over a few times. That's what the crash report said, anyway." The nurse's face was set into a frown. "We knew some brain trauma was likely to cause a lapse in memory, but they can come back. Do you remember anything else?"  
Car drifted off the road...yes, he did remember. His face froze, eyes fixed on the middle distance. A set of moments like single snapshots bobbed up from the soup: a decision, a seatbelt undone stealthily, reaching for the door handle...the moment after that was much heavier, all at once, shouting and a dramatic tilt and a groaning crunch...a frighteningly complete silence he broke alone, crying out and still reaching with a broken arm for the door...

Instinct acted. He grabbed the nurse's hand.

\------------------------------------------------

Poe wasn't anticipating this response. His fingers were being crushed by the sheer force of the grip—for a guy who clouldn't stand up on his own a moment ago, this was a good sign for physical recovery, but very bad news for his mental state and Poe's hand. Poe sat himself in his line of sight again, searched his dark eyes for some sign of clarity. Words seemed to bounce right off John Doe's mask of terror, but he rattled them off anyway.  
"You're safe now, ok? Nothing's happening; it's all over, you're safe. Hey, look at me—I'm here with you, alright? They got you out. You're here with me and nothing else is gonna happen. Just you and me."  
They seemed to be reaching him. His grip loosened. Poe nearly reached to clap him on the shoulder, but remembered himself and took his other hand instead. He echoed himself, softer and softer, words he hardly registered before he said them.  
They drifted into anticipatory silence, waiting for the other to make a move. It struck Poe that this was the first time he'd seen John Doe's face awake. There was a softness to it just as there had been sleeping, but the black eyes set so intently on him changed the whole nature of his expression.  
It would be amazing to find out what he looked like smiling.

Poe shook himself out of his fog and cocked an apologetic half smile.  
"Sorry. Shouldn't have asked that so soon."  
"No, no," he said, at once quick to reassure Poe and a little surprised that he was fine. "I'm glad I still have some memories."  
The timbre of his voice was lower than Poe expected. He'd be lying if he said it wasn't a pleasant surprise.  
"Do you remember things before the accident at all? We've, uh—we've been searching for any kind of information on you that we can find, and we haven't found any."  
"None?"  
"No records, no report cards, no names. What's your name?"  
Name...He understood names conceptually. Call them by it and they respond, distinguish them from others. From those who didn't have names.  
He didn't have a name.   
When they needed him, he was pulled or pushed or tapped and told what to do. But a name isn't for those of his rank. Names are for commanders, leaders.

The words dropped from his mouth like they were embarrassed to be heard.   
"...I don't have one."  
Poe blinked. "You...don't remember one?"  
"They never gave me one."

The air around them grayed and congealed. This would be a much bigger investigation than Poe thought. He hadn't heard anything on the coroner's reports from the rest of the vehicle, but whatever this was, John Doe and that car were probably just the tip of some terrible iceberg.  
Poe cleared his throat. "Well, uh—we kinda have a nickname for you. Since we didn't have anything to go on and John Doe's just a placeholder."  
He tilted his head. A nickname could still be a name. Sometimes a nickname was more powerful than a real name. "Is it a good nickname?"  
Poe laughed, a light laugh of relief and surprise. It set John Doe immediately at ease.  
"It is, don't worry, we didn't make fun of you. The liscence plate on the car started with FNN. So we filled in a vowel and started calling you Finn."  
"Finn." He tested it on his tongue. It sat there very easily. The glamour of having a name coaxed a smile across his face. "Yeah, Finn. I like that!"  
Poe was right. It was an amazing smile.  
"What's your name, then?" Finn asked with earnest.  
"Poe, Poe Dameron."  
Finn extended the hand not bound by a cast. "Good to meet you, Poe."  
Happiness welled up in him, and Poe took his hand again. "Good to meet you, Finn."

They sat there for a moment, a warmth spread between them, and Poe was reluctant to rise. But he had rooms waiting.  
"Hey listen, Finn—I gotta head out, make the rest of my rounds. I'll let 'em know you're awake. They're probably gonna mob you with police asking questions. Just don't be afraid to send them off if you're exhausted. Your recovery is priority over the investigation."  
Finn nodded. The gravity of the situation hung near, but not quite upon them yet. Poe kept stalling himself.  
"I'm, uh—I'm night shift, so I'm not gonna be around while the police are here. So you gotta be the one to tell 'em to get lost."  
Finn chuckled, a warm baritone. "I'll try."  
"Ok." He'd run out of ideas. There was nothing left now but to leave, much as he hated to. "You'd better be in bed when I come in to check on you tomorrow. You're not allowed to scare me like that again, Finn."  
The name wasn't exceptionally beautiful, but it rang like music in Finn's ears.  
"See you around, Poe," he called after his nurse. Finn was met with a wave and an easy smile.

Outside the window, a buttery sunrise was beginning to spill over onto the floor and across his bedspread.  
Finn began to plot how he could arrange to be awake before the sun.


	3. two days later, 4:28pm

Rey did like the dull thud that her tennis shoes loaned to her purposeful stride. Some parts of being a nursing student she could very well do without, but if it all fell apart, she was _definitely_ keeping the shoes.

She hated to think of it all falling apart—but if her youth had taught her nothing else, Rey knew that any plans for the future needed to be kept in the same place in her heart as the silver linings of whatever failings life will bring.

But maybe she shouldn't clutter her head with that yet. There was a lot of work to be done in this strange new world, and she had a lot still to prove.

 

Hospitals are overwhelming no matter where they are, but a premier research hospital in a major city is no joke. Amidala Memorial presented an entry as elegant and impressive as its namesake, but go any deeper into its bowels and it became a total labyrinth. Rey got lost in the state-of-the-art burn center on the way to the state-of-the-art oncology center her first day of training, and had to find her way back via the state-of-the-art trauma, infectious disease, and neurology centers. She couldn’t bring herself to ask anybody for help, but in a place that big, if you walked quickly and set your eyes sternly forward, nobody would know that you had no idea what you were doing.

(Rey’s pride would not make it out unscathed that day—who but the _director of the hospital_ would catch her staring at the map on the wall just outside of the quarantine room? Rey still reddened to think of the little glint in Director Organa’s eye when she said in that low, sharp voice, “Take the walking bridge across; classroom’s first on the left. Better hurry.”)

She had employed the “feign confidence until it’s real” strategy effectively enough that for a while, she didn’t need to feign it at all. Rey learned early on that she could rely on nobody but herself, and so she did her best to become a person that she could rely upon. Pretty difficult when her meals were based mostly on what resale shops would pay for her finds, but not impossible. And with the unbelievable luck from this mysterious benefactor, it seemed like nothing was impossible for her lately.

Yes, she had obtained a mysterious benefactor. Of course they weren’t really called that in these days. It was more appropriate to say that Rey had the generosity of an anonymous sponsor for her RN training. _Incredibly_ anonymous—no matter how she pressed anyone that might know for information, there wasn’t a hint of a name and no way to contact them. She would have been satisfied even with a P.O. box if it meant she had a way to thank them herself. Instead, she settled for a somewhat absurd habit of sending—well, it wasn’t quite a prayer, because it wasn’t thanking a god—but it felt like a prayer of thanks. Just a little “thank you, whoever you are; I won’t let it all be for nothing” sent up into space. And even more absurdly, every once in a while, a warm feeling would spread in her chest, and the part of her heart that still believed in magic and impossibilities felt that they had heard her.

 

That feeling was not with her today. It had started as one of those where everything was already going wrong even before she headed out the door for class. Her alarm shut off during an outage in the middle of the night, meaning she had no time to spare for breakfast, or even to tie up her shoes or hair, before leaving the boarding-house she could barely afford. In class her slightly sadistic teacher called on her unsolicited, and Rey realized that she’d neglected her reading again. And in a moment of the universe’s most elegant of ironies, at the very time Rey wished most to be invisible, she tripped over that untied shoelace, leaving class with a spectacular visibility. It was for this reason that she was thankful for the power in the _thud_ of her shoes, having already faced humiliation before the day’s work truly began for her.

Her routine rushed along as it always did. Help this one wash, help this one eat, bring this one this and that one that; it was never quite the same each day, but there was always an underlying pulse to the work. It kept Rey tired, but it also kept her happy. Scraping about for objects that might be of value always felt rather aimless. Healing people had a purpose, and studying how to heal them properly gave Rey a much larger goal than making it one more day. It made going home smelling of bodily fluids a bit easier, and she had nearly forgotten the terrible start she’d had that morning. Only one more patient in 2187 and she could move on completely.

The notes for this new one were jumbled at best and written in a sharply angled hand, like Dameron couldn’t form the words fast enough:

                **_Awake 3:32 on __ ______, ____--fell out_**

**_Disoriented but able to stand temporarily_ **

**_Amnesiac? Head trauma from accident_ **

**_DO NOT QUESTION_ **

At the top of the paper, he’d crossed out the John Doe and written “Finn” in proudly underlined letters. Rey smiled. Even though she’d only met Poe a handful of times, she already knew all about his investment in 2187’s nickname as both its inventor and biggest perpetrator. Perhaps the name really did suit him—if he was awake she would find out.

 

She looked up from her clipboard and saw the room numbers beside the door. Beside the room numbers, an imposing, frowning police officer with a gun strapped to her hip. A sharp iciness surged down Rey’s back.

 _Don’t stop me don’t stop me don’t stop me_. Her fingers were tight on the clipboard, but her chin tipped up high.

It worked. The policewoman’s eyes followed her, but nothing else did. Rey pursed her lips against the smile. Her shoes _thudthudthud_ ed into the interrogation with the knowledge that they took precedence.

 

“You still haven’t told us exactly what your leaders were involved in, sir.” The officer planted at the end of the bed, feet apart, had to be at least six foot three. It seemed he was stretching his head higher to make himself even larger.

“And I told you I didn’t know. That’s not my rank. Guys on the bottom rung can’t ask these kind of questions.” Finn stared deliberately at the headboard. Eye contact with this guy was exhausting after answering honestly two times already.

“Then do you at _least_ have some names?”

“We didn’t _have_ names. Do you think I would have known any _real_ ones, anyway?”

“Sir, unless you cooperate we will be no closer to convicting your captors—“

“Finn?”

Patient and officer turned with surprise to see that Rey had come in. The sudden silence made her redden a little despite her best efforts.

“It’s alright if I call you that, isn’t it?” she asked, voice softening a little.

“Ah…“ Finn tried to straighten up. “Yeah, sure. If you want.”

“Ma’am, if you don’t mind I need to finish asking this young man a few more questions—“

Rey set her jaw. “And I need to check his vitals, sir.”

“I would just need a few more minutes.”

Rey and Finn shared a glance.

“Finn needs to heal. I need to make sure he’s doing his job by doing mine. Pardon me,” she said, hoping that her voice would come out more steel than shiver, “but you’ve already done yours, officer.”

His mouth closed. The policeman placed his hat back on his high head, gave a curt nod to them both, and tried to keep from scowling too much as he left the room.

“Thank you.”

Rey turned back to face him and let go of the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Finn’s face was serious, brow tilted, and she found herself positively frozen by his eyes. They were so…they made her think of words she hardly knew, like “ardent” and “earnest,” and they were so completely focused it ruffled her. It took her a moment to remember where she was.

“No problem. He seemed a little…”

“Yeah,” Finn said, and his mouth teased at a smile that didn’t quite realize itself. “I know he’s supposed to be helping me, but I don’t really like that guy.”

Rey nearly laughed, but remembered herself and the clipboard in her hand.

“Well—let’s get started, then.”


	4. five days later, 12:34am

It was bad form to look like you were giving special treatment or attention to one patient. But at this point, Poe didn't really care. This kid had earned a little special treatment, in his own professional opinion, and he needed some attention beyond routine checkups and police interviews.

(Friends of his would laugh when he told them this and ask him if he ever had taken much of a shine to following rules in the first place—it was a very good point.)

Finn’s sleeping schedule was pretty irregular in the first few days following that rude awakening, and Poe wasn’t always sure if he’d meet him with his eyes open. So it began with notes stuck to the tray attached to his bed.

“ _Hey buddy, asked about you—Dr. Kalonia says your physical therapy is going great. Glad you’re resting up for it! -Poe Dameron”_

_“Turned off the TV for you since you fell asleep with it on. Animal Planet has an ENTIRE SHOW about baby animals and I think you would like it better than infomercials. Channel 45. -Poe”_

_“There was a little kid visiting his mom today and he was a carbon copy of you, it kinda freaked me out. Real cute kid. Had a ton of questions about doctor stuff I tried to answer. Hope I get a good story out of him to tell you. -PD”_

And from there, Poe couldn’t keep himself from pushing it further.

When Finn’s gashes and bones had begun to lace together again, he woke one morning to see a cake wrapped in plastic, a swirl of frosting across its top face. It was a little hard to open with one hand still in the cast, but Finn decided not to mention this to Poe. The cake made up for that easily by being the sweetest thing he’d eaten since—

Well, ever. At least in his broken memory, it was. That was also starting to lace together, but not nearly as well as his body.

 

Thinking back, all he could tell the police were the facts that were likely dictated to him by his commanders. Finn knew that he was removed from his parents at a very young age, maybe three or four years old. He was not certain of his exact age—the hospital put him between twenty and twenty-five, but without any other information nobody could make a better guess. He knew that he and the other kids were drafted into a shadowy terrorist organization known as The First Order, but not its exact location or the given names of any of its leaders.

This may have been enough for the authorities to go on in some cases. But Finn also knew that anyone suspected of being a spy was never seen again in the compound.

Which is also what baffled him—what made him want to defect? Finn felt like he was studying someone else’s life; the only memories allowed to escape read like a bad biography that presumes too much. _If he—if I,_ he thought, _grew up surrounded by and trained to do violence my whole life, what would make me stop?_ Perhaps there was some other reason. For now, he could draw his own hazy conclusion: maybe he left because he witnessed something so terrible it shattered any illusions he might have had about the First Order, or he heard that a friend of his had managed to escape and wanted to join them.

But even reaching as far back as he can remember, Finn couldn’t recall having a feeling for one of those kidnapped kids in there with him like the one he had about Poe.

 

* * *

 

 

It was one of those beautiful shifts when Finn was awake (and without realizing he was doing it, staring at the door). Those were the best times, because then the guys could actually _talk_ to each other. Mostly Poe talked as he made his notes, since he’d avoided asking Finn too many questions after that first day. He would talk about his day, his dog, some of the other nurses and the doctors. They both could talk about Rey now that they had all met, and though he knew it couldn’t happen anytime soon, Finn developed a notion of them all talking together, hanging out. Besides Poe, Rey was the friendliest face he saw. The doctors were kind to him, but seeing Rey gave him a feeling almost like seeing Poe—not identical, but with the same unfamiliarly familiar warmth. He lost himself in this feeling sometimes, so much that he would completely blank and bask in it with half a smile lighting his face.

“…to me about a promotion. Director Organa called me in around lunch but I panicked and asked her to put it off ‘til tomorrow. Can’t believe she agreed. She’s never been known for her patience.”

Finn blinked. “Wait, what? They wanna promote you?”

Poe chuckled. “Jeez, buddy, I thought I was doing a good job!”

“No, no, you are—you’re great. Of course they’d promote you.”

Poe smiled, but didn’t meet Finn’s eyes. He pressed on.

“What would they promote you to?”

The smile cracked wider into a grin, disbelief turning the corners of his mouth up. “Nurse manager. It’s crazy. I wouldn’t be literally wiping people’s asses anymore. I’d schedule when and where some _other_ guy would be wiping asses.”

Finn scoffed. “So why’d you panic? That sounds like an easy yes.” He couldn’t imagine turning down an opportunity to advance like that. You were safer at the top in so many ways, and he’d never had the privilege of tasting that kind of power.

“I thought it would be, too. But then I thought about it some more.”

He lowered himself onto the end of Finn’s bed with a weary sigh. Finn couldn’t imagine how tired a nurse’s feet must get, and Poe always seemed to half-jog everywhere he went.

 

“I’ve been doing this job for…five years now, I guess. A lot of the people I work with are older than me, but they’re looking at me for this spot. Director Organa’s given me her blessing, so who knows how far that could take me—I could probably move up even further if I said yes, be impressive, make Mom proud and all of that. The pay’s great. But I don’t know.” He leaned back a bit on his hands and turned to point his dimmed smile on Finn, whose dark eyes still caught him by surprise every time. “I would kinda miss wiping asses, to be honest.”

Finn wrinkled his nose, but spoke with a laugh at the edge of his voice. “Are you sure I’m the one with the messed-up head?”

And they both laughed, real laughs. It broke the stiff quiet of a hospital recovery ward in the wee hours of the morning like a streetlamp on a dark avenue, isolated and unmistakable.

He had to give him that—some parts of the job just always, always suck. “Ok, I wouldn’t miss the ass-wiping, but the other stuff.” Poe sobered. “The kid I told you about that reminded me of you wouldn’t be part of my job anymore, either. I’d be up at normal hours in an office, not out there with the people I help. I wouldn’t get to be present for all my patients, or the moments like that. I’d miss that a lot.”

Poe’s eyes trailed up Finn’s shoulder for a quiet moment, along the lines of his collarbone and neck. The kid was healing much faster than expected, but it became less surprising when they realized he was startlingly strong. Whatever the First Order wanted him to do, Finn must have been able to do with ease. A memory—that first night, balancing him off the floor, his full weight in Poe’s arms.

Poe stopped just short of his eyes when he realized that he’d stared far too long to escape suspicion. _Damn it_. His meaning had gotten too obvious. _‘I’d miss_ you _a lot.’_

“What’ll you do tomorrow?”

Poe glanced away, but still felt Finn’s eyes on him, the way he did sometimes even when Finn was nowhere nearby.

“Try to refuse. I love my job. I don’t want to give it up for another one that someone else probably wants more.” He rose, reluctant as always, from the end of the bed. “But Leia Organa is very persuasive.”

“Probably not more than you are stubborn,” Finn joked, a slow grin warming his face. Poe couldn’t look for long before he had to look away. _God, he’s too much_.

“I hope you’re right.” Poe scratched the back of his neck and tried glancing back at Finn, one more time, before the sappiest thing he could have possibly said stumbled out of his mouth and into the open air. “I’d really hate to give up seeing you.”

He reddened almost immediately when he saw Finn’s eyes widen. He had to get _out_ of here. Poe could barely turn around to say a hasty ‘bye, Finn’ and rush out the door.

 

Finn laid back and stared at the ceiling for a very long time after that, unwilling to fall asleep. Poe usually didn’t act like that at all. Did he say something wrong? But it didn’t seem _wrong_. It was—well, Poe was always very friendly and generous with other people. That was just who he was as a person. Finn had figured that how the nurse acted with him must have been how he acted with everybody. He would be no great exception, right?

But then again…Dr. Kalonia did give him this _look_ sometimes when he mentioned Poe during physical conditioning. He recalled one day hearing from her as he retrained his free hand, _You know, Dameron is very invested in seeing you get better_ , but Finn didn’t really think much of it. That was his job, after all. And Poe loved his job fiercely; he’d said as much to him just minutes ago. Finn turned the phrase over and over in his mind. _Poe loves his job that allows him to help people like me. Poe loves his job that allows him to help…me. Poe loves_ —

 _Oh my god_.

He bolted upright. Finn heard the heart rate machine’s beeps grow rapid and shallow as a rabbit’s pulse.

 _Oh my god. It was so obvious. He—wait. Maybe you’re assuming too much. Maybe he had too much coffee today. You’re probably reading too much into this_. Nonsensically, his pacing brain conjured the angle of Poe’s hand at the back of his dark head. Finn had noticed the wispy curls getting too long and peeking through his steady fingers; the memory followed through to the eyes, soft and apologetic and saying the same thing as his mouth, saying _I’d really hate to give up seeing you—_

Finn’s face was frozen in a mask of muted terror. He realized he couldn’t imagine staying here without the promise of Poe, the first face he saw in this new world, and he realized that Poe was his means of comparison to everything Before. From a place of gray compounds and assembling assault rifles and namelessness, he’s fallen into precisely the opposite: a genial defiance of order, a companionship on equal grounds, an identity. Poe had brought with him everything that the First Order denied.

He recalled something else Dr. Kalonia said during physical therapy. Poe had come up in conversation again the day he left the chocolate cake—Finn was worried Poe would end up in trouble somehow for leaving him food that wasn’t served at the hospital, but she reassured him that nobody would berate him for something like that.

“He was the one who thought of your nickname, Finn. Did he tell you that?”

Finn had frowned, said no, he didn’t, he had kinda generalized it for all the nurses.

“He probably didn’t want to embarrass you. But ever since you’ve adopted it, the admins have held back any objections. He’s been good for you. I don’t think we’ve ever seen someone recover from such serious injuries this well at this rate.”

Quite literally, Poe had given him his personhood. Was that the warm feeling, then? Was the shade of warmth Poe brought the sensation of feeling like a real person for the first time? Then what was Rey’s shade of warmth; what did that one mean? What was the tingling when Poe would touch him that felt somehow _different_ from seeing him walk in the door?

Even though it was ridiculous, Finn’s first impulse was to remind himself to ask Poe about this the next time he saw him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think my muse arrived. I'm glad I'm finding my way into Finn/Poe now and not just Finn and Poe. Still trying to figure out Finn and Poe and Rey, but I want it so badly it HAS to happen eventually.  
> Thank you all so much for the support and the kudos and the comments; this is the first really solid fic I've attempted and I'm so proud. Let's see where it takes us!


	5. next day, 6:20pm

Immediately after a tense meeting with the Director as soon as he clocked in, Nurse Dameron took dinner so he could lay his head on the break room table and sulk. This is how Karé found him: food untouched and left cold, head folded into his arms, idly poking his hand with a plastic fork.

She rubbed his shoulder with the ease of a longtime friend. “That’s not how you play hand roulette.”

“Shut up, Karé,” he murmured, voice muffled beneath his arms.

“What did she tell you in there?” Karé’s real concern poked its head around her sarcastic tone, not quite sure if it should show itself.

“How do you think she feels when people say no to her good ideas?” Poe raised his head so she could see his drawn brow. “That part was ok, actually. I prepared for worse. Her advisors are pretty thrilled she’s letting the job go to someone else, especially Threepio. Leia’s obviously not happy about it, but I think she respects my decision.”

“Better not let her find out you call her that.”

“Oh, no. She knows already. It’s cool.”

Karé pulled out the chair beside him, in no rush to start her day today, either. “So what’s up?”

Poe stared into the middle distance, the remembered mortification of last night wearing itself in the lines around his eyes. “I made a complete fool of myself.”

“In front of the hospital board?”

An absent wave of the hand and a slightly slurred reply. “No, this ’s a different one.”

“Are you gonna make me play 20 Questions to figure this out?”

Poe groaned, rubbed the bridge of his long nose. It felt even dumber to say it out loud than it did to marinate in the embarrassment. “It’s Finn. I think I blew it.”

“What? What did you do?” she chided.

“I dunno, I just got really sappy and I panicked and I bailed.” He slumped back onto the table, chin nested into his arms, a blush nearly coming across his cheek again.

Karé sighed. He was _pouting_. Honestly, you would think this kind of thing had never happened to him before. “Come on, you’re acting like a teenager. So what if you got sappy? You’re sappy all the time.”

“But we can’t just move on from that like nothing happened; it’ll be weird now.”

“Poe. It was already weird.”

He deigned not to form a witty comeback and dug his fork around in his cold pilaf instead. After a beat, Karé whisked it away to the microwave, sending a few surprised grains of rice to scatter on the table—and on Poe’s face.

“Hey!”

She punched in the microwave with a deft and determined line drawing across her mouth. “Here’s what’s gonna happen: you’re sitting up— “with a swift yank, she pulled him to the middle of the floor “—and you’re eating dinner, and you’re getting up because you’ve got a lot to do. And so do I, so quit moping around. A crush isn’t gonna kill you.”

 

* * *

 

 

Rey was still working on developing a gentle touch, a fact that Finn tried to appreciate as she unwound the bandages around his head. Last time, the dried blood stuck to the pad had about the same effect as ripping off a Band-Aid. When he complained, she told him to just be grateful he didn’t get stitches for it.

This time, it went much better. “Looks like you’ve bled out all you needed to, that’s good,” she said to the wound, a crinkle of concentration forming on her own forehead. “I think we’re ready to get rid of the bandages for good.”

“Thank _god_ ,” Finn sighed. “They get so itchy but you put them on too tight for me to scratch.”

She took a neutral tone as she slipped the blood pressure tourniquet around his good arm. “You’re not supposed to scratch.”

“See, you people all say stuff like that—literally everyone scratches an itch when they’ve got one but you all try to make us take the high road. It’s not natural.”

“Keep talking to me like that and I’ll have to take your blood pressure on one of your other limbs.”

She said it with a scowl, but not with malice, not really. Rey never took the high road in an argument, but there weren’t many people in the world that she had the capacity to really despise. She despised her former employer, Mr. Plutt, and at times she despised her family for vanishing off the face of the earth, but beyond that? She couldn’t think of any, except whoever led the First Order. Rey had no clue who that was, but had decided already that they were unforgivable for denying innocent kids a safe future with their families.

She was thinking about that today after seeing a child there to visit his mother who looked just like a young Finn, about four or five years old. That’s about how old Finn said he was when he was drafted into the organization, though he couldn’t give an account of his early days in the First Order if you asked him. Maybe one day he would remember, but Rey wasn’t sure if _she_ wanted him to rediscover those memories. What could an outfit like the First Order need kids for? Ill-defined assumptions of abuses mirrored her own memories of playing in secret with things that were not toys, of gradually giving up on asking when her parents would come back and get her, of wanting so terribly to grow the biggest pair of wings and lift up into the sky—

“ _OW_! Jesus!”

“Sorry!”

Rey quickly wrote down the number and undid the Velcro. The tourniquet had inflated so much, Finn wondered if it would give him a new bruise. He looked up into her eyes, brow folded.

“Are you ok?”

Rey blinked. This question had been asked of her sincerely a very limited number of times in her life. The irony that a patient asking a nurse if _she_ was ok dawned on her. “Yeah, I’m just—I got distracted, sorry.” The words shuffled lamely out of her throat, knowing fully they weren’t honest. She couldn’t leave it at that. “I think I’m letting myself worry too much about you.”

Finn didn’t understand. “But you said I’m healing up.”

“No, the part that comes after. Do you…” The question struggled to be asked. Rey still wasn’t always sure what she could and couldn’t talk about with patients, especially with Finn. Some questions seemed to help, others sent him into a dead-eyed numbness or worse. But those were mainly about the past. This was a question about his future. That kind of anxiety was more universal. “Do you have a plan for where you’ll stay once we discharge you? We can’t keep on healthy people with limited space for sick ones.”

His face sobered. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that. I overhear a lot of conversations—they say they might try to put me up in a shelter until I can find somewhere permanent. But I have no idea how I’ll make that happen.”

 

Somehow, hearing it from him was what finally sunk in the fact that Finn was effectively nonexistent in this world beyond his compound. No residence, no formal educational background, no name on record. There was still a heated debate going on among the board of directors on the topic of who would foot the bill for his care; the state might be coerced into taking some responsibility, but Finn certainly had no money, and Amidala Memorial relied heavily enough on donations as it was. And if they did scrape together enough to relieve this burden from one patient, how many more will point to that as a reason for them to receive aid from the hospital? At the police’s behest, Finn’s investigation wasn’t highly publicized and wouldn’t be until it was clear that the First Order did not intend to endanger the people closest to Finn. So a charity fund was out. His fate read like murky lake water: unknowable and full of shadows.

Rey bit her lip and gathered the pounding of her heart up into some soft words, her eyes struggling to find his at the right moment.

“I, ah—I haven’t been in your exact position, but I think I know the feeling. I’ve been without my family for a long time. And it is difficult, but I promise it’s not impossible. There’s always something. You find a few good things for yourself and hold onto them with all your power. And sometimes you just have amazing luck. And you _must_ be lucky—you’re escaped and alive and almost fixed up. _That’s_ a miracle.”

Finn laughed once, a low laugh. “Believe me, I know. I just hope my luck holds.”

It warmed Rey a little and made her smile back at him with some desperate, inexpressible feeling tainting the corners. It wasn’t exactly pity, though that was certainly in the mix. It was pity, but real hope, too. _Faith_ isn’t an emotion, but it was the closest thing to what caused the slight crack in her voice to form. “See? Halfway there. Luck and finding good things to hold onto can get anybody by.”

 

* * *

 

 

Her advice sat heavy in Finn’s head long after Rey had gone. She had admitted she really couldn’t relate to his situation, and ultimately Finn felt no less lost in the world than he did before, but holding onto what was good seemed like as good a place as any to begin. The problem was that the list of things Finn realized he wanted to hold onto began and ended with Poe Dameron.

He felt silly telling himself this, even if he knew it was true. Everything else about his waking days was pushing towards a future he didn’t want to enter—getting stronger, getting loose ends tied, getting stitched up and wrapped up and pulled back together so that he could step outside himself and walk on his own feet into a world that would never know him. The handful of moments in the day that didn’t feel like a push towards the door, the ones where he could sit and exist in that moment, were with Poe.

Finn closed his eyes. He wouldn’t see Poe tonight. The last Post-It note stuck to his tray table said that Poe finally had a day off and he’d be crazy not to take it, much as he regrets missing Finn. The nurse needed it desperately; he’d been working even longer hours than usual, as if to punish him for turning down the nurse manager position. Awful as it was, Finn was glad he hadn’t taken the offer. Even if he was only going to be allowed to stay at Amidala Memorial for a few more days at most, he wanted to spend them within Poe’s reach. Every day that he did things more quickly, with less struggle, the desperation rose in his throat and threatened to close it up with a nameless panic, because he knew that someday he would have to leave that bed. He would not be able to listen at the door for the warm tones of that voice to slip under it. He would have to lose the one thing that really, truly set him at ease, likely within the week.

Finn closed his eyes tighter and forced himself to quiet his mind. The best thing he could do right then was try to get some sleep, and save his waking hours for Poe while he still had them.

 

* * *

 

 

**Unknown, Unknown (“Finn”)**

**Injuries: minor head contusion, fractured left radius/ulna, major laceration of rhomboids and erector spinae (37 stitches), dislocation of tibia at the right ankle**

**Residency: 8 days**

**DISCHARGED ___ ________, _____**


	6. next day, 6:07pm

“What do you mean? _This morning_?”

Rey had been here two hours too long already; one favor had led to another and to another, and she was hungry and exhausted, and for some reason it had fallen to _her_ to tell Dameron that his _office crush_ was gone. This had better mean she was getting paid good overtime.

She took a slow breath. “There was nothing else that required hospital superv—“

“Half his back was torn open and he’s got a broken arm! How’d they manage to fix that in the one day I was gone?!”

Rey wanted to shake him until he snapped out of it. “You know better than me that you don’t keep a broken bone in the hospital until it heals. They put the full cast on him this morning and told him to come back here in two weeks for the stitches and two after that for the cast, standard protocol.”

Poe dragged a hand down his face and shifted on his feet, huffed an exasperated sigh. She was right about that, and he knew she was right, and he hated it. “So that was it? Just kicked him out the door?”

Her lips drew together. “They gave him a crutch and got a car to take him to the homeless shelter 6 blocks down.”

His mouth parted in offense. “He _dislocated his ankle_. Finn can’t _walk_. We’re allowed to dump a half-crippled kid in—Jesus Christ, he’s gonna get himself in some kind of trouble and he can’t even walk away—“

“Poe.”

He finally looked back at Rey after his eyes wandered all about, as if searching for whoever was responsible for this. Her heart couldn’t keep from pulling a little bit at the sight of him, as annoyed as she felt: frantic, one hand raking back the curls that he’d let go for far too long, and the bags under his eyes deepened from the solid week of twelve-hour shifts he’d been pulling. Poe looked dead on his feet, and this was yet another worry for him to carry just because he _cared_ too damn much, about everybody, but especially about this no-name kid.

“I mean, I know we gotta be professional, but _god_ …this ‘s just cold. It’s completely callous.”

He’d gone in and softened her heart and Rey knew he was right. “I know.”

“Didn’t anybody have a better idea than this?”

“Well…the police are afraid that the First Order might target the home that Finn is staying in if they find out where he is. So everyone with their own place that had the space for him was scared out of offering.” Rey herself would have offered if she had been living anywhere but that boarding house. A strict “no overnight guests without cash pay” policy, two flights of stairs, and a truly paranoid landlady just piled impossibilities atop each other. But Rey despised this feeling of powerlessness to really help someone who needed it, especially someone she cautiously considered to be like a friend.

“That’s bullshit. The police are backing him. The First Order’s gotta know that.” Poe’s frown deepened when he realized that nobody on the force had offered to take Finn in, either, evidently. Maybe the police didn’t really have him after all.

Rey stepped a little closer and dropped her voice to a murmur. “I can’t do anything about this. I don’t have the option to, but—do you have your own place?”

His hushed reply came tipped with a question—why was she whispering? “Yes?”

Their eyes locked, now as conspirators and not co-workers. “ _I_ can’t do anything for Finn, but if _you_ did, then I could promise I wouldn’t tell.”

The light clicked on behind Poe’s forehead, and he clapped a hand on Rey’s shoulder. “…Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

 

End-of-shift could not have taken longer to come. Poe found himself nearly sprinting out the door, still not entirely in his jacket, after fumbling his card rushing through clock-out.

Six a.m. lifted on the brisk morning, the sun just beginning to rise over the tops of buildings and warming the sky into soft pinks and oranges. Poe didn’t slow down to admire it and kept at a swift stride. He was fairly certain he remembered where the shelter was relative to the west entrance of the hospital—he was good with directions and had the city almost memorized after having lived there for years, but he still worried that something would blow him off-course, and _what if Finn isn’t resting his foot? He has that crutch, but he really shouldn’t be putting_ any _weight on his foot in the first place. Somebody could easily take it from him if he wasn’t looking, and then what? Is anybody gonna carry him around? There’s gotta be some law against this somewhere, something about ‘unjust discharge of patients with no existing address’—wait, this must happen to all the other homeless people we take in, too. What the hell? We gotta change that. That’s just not ethical. Nothing about thi—oh. Here it is._

It was dim, with a single working bulb lighting the front desk. Cheap taupe paint was chipped off the walls in some places to reveal a strange seafoam green underneath. Something about this, and about the glint in the stern clerk’s eyes letting him in, made Poe’s shoulders shrink a little closer. He half-held his breath stepping silently through the hallway to the room he was told Finn had been assigned to.

The door creaked upon opening, and Poe winced. But to his relief (and surprise), the cots were empty, save one figure sitting on the end of the row, within reach of the suggestion of sunlight coming through the dirty windows. His crutch sat safe within his reach. Finn did not turn around, and Poe paused at the doorjamb, suddenly unsure of how to approach the very person he’d been planning to meet for twelve solid hours. It felt nonsensical, all his words stopped up in his throat at the very moment he wanted most to speak them.

He didn’t need to. Finn, confused as to why the guy at the door didn’t just come in already, turned around, and his mouth spread into an amazed grin. Poe could feel himself crumble, just a little, and finally walked in the door.

Finn’s voice rose in the sweetest way when he was this happy. “Poe Dameron! Wha—you came here?!” He pulled the crutch under his arm and nearly tripped through it in his haste to meet Poe.

“Course I did! When I foun—“ And for the second time, Finn’s full weight was in Poe’s arms. The crutch fell useless to the floor. The nurse quickly steadied him on his shoulders, arm hooked under his own. The two swapped gazes, relief and embarrassment. “Still learning that crutch?”

Finn nearly laughed. He hadn’t even used it twice. “Sorry. Good catch.”

Poe pushed the crutch closer with his foot and scooped it up. Finn did not trust the arm of the crutch the same way he trusted Poe’s, and he felt ghosts where his fingertips had been. If Poe noticed the slight disappointment crossing Finn’s face when he let go, he didn’t acknowledge it, too deep in his own criticisms to pay it mind. “See, _this_ is why I couldn’t believe they released you. If I had any say, you would’ve been there for at least another week. Something’s not right about letting you go when you aren’t fully mobile and…nevermind. I’ll go on forever. Are _you_ feeling ok?”

Finn wasn’t sure. He was shocked by the early discharge and too afraid to argue for a longer hospital stay, but getting out and seeing even six blocks of the city was fantastic. Finn had never seen a metropolis of any kind, and the prospect of eventually seeing more of it made him almost cheerful. But that wouldn’t happen for weeks and weeks, when he could be off the painkillers and have his stitches and his cast clipped and throw away the stupid crutch. He was out of the hospital bed, which meant he should have been free, but he was still trapped by his broken body; free for him meant free to be invisible, or worse: free to be found again by the First Order.

“Finn? You wanna sit?”

Finn blinked. He must’ve gotten that shell-shocked look on his face again. “Yeah, probably should…”

They sunk onto the metal-framed cot together, hip-to-hip. The cot really was not that small, but neither made any move away from the other. Silently, they were both grateful to the other for the quiet brush of his hip against his.

“Are you doing alright here?” Poe asked, and his voice sounded very warm in the concrete-cold air of the shelter.

“Yeah. It’s…strange, but I’m ok.”

Nobody had made any move to talk to him, and Finn hadn’t wanted to try making conversation with his roommates, either. He hadn’t been sure whether this coldness was a good or bad thing, and spent the day sleeping instead of thinking about it. His ankle had given him a pass the first day to stay in when the rest of the room was kicked outside the shelter, but he wasn’t sure how long that would be allowed.

“But do you _want_ to stay?”

Finn shook his head. “I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“You could stay with me.”

And Finn turned to look Poe in the eyes, because he had said it so simply, like this is what he would’ve said all along, like this was always what he was going to ask.

“If you want to,” Poe added, anxiety vexing the hope in his eyes. “If that would be too weird—are you allergic to dogs?”

“No?”

“Ok, good. I’m glad you’re not. I would hate being allergic to dogs. I’ve got a dog.”

“I know, you told me about her.”

“I did? I did, right.”

Finn could not suppress his smile.

“Do you want to stay here?” Poe asked again, no longer anywhere near calm or collected. That moment of hesitation had terrified him worse than he could have imagined—and Poe had started out in the trauma ward.

“ _Hell_ no.”

The smile jumped from Finn’s face to Poe’s, and it broke like the dawn that finally began to show itself through the windows.

 

* * *

 

 

Finn had no luggage. All he had to his name was the crutch beneath his arm, the painkillers they retrieved from the front desk of the shelter, and an undershirt and pair of sweatpants given to him by the hospital upon discharge.

“They didn’t even give you a _jacket_?” Poe really didn’t need another reason to be angry with the board of directors, but it was like they just kept coming. “Chrissake, it’s almost winter! I’m gonna protest, I swear to God…”

They sat side by side on the bus stop bench. Poe had asked Finn if he liked bagels, and when Finn said he had never had one, Poe wanted to act immediately to remedy this travesty.

“Poe, I’m fine. I don’t get cold that easy.”

 “No, here, take mine. When you break a bone or dislocate something, your circulation gets messed up. Gotta regulate that shit if you don’t want to lose use of it.“

And Poe was grinning and shrugging out of his jacket, soft brown leather material with the meds sticking out of the front pocket. It fell snug around Finn’s shoulders, and when he knew that arguing with Poe would be useless, it fit snug around his arms, the ghost of Poe’s own arms alive against the lining.

“I think it fits you better, anyway.”

The brisk air concealed the heat rising in Finn’s cheek. “I’ll get my own eventually.”

“No, no—keep it, it suits you.” He nudged Finn’s arm (the un-broken half). “Consider it a get-well-soon gift.”

Finn chuckled, stared down fondly at his hands folded around the crutch. “Thank you.”

Poe came so, so close to putting a hand on Finn’s knee—familiar, natural—but something stopped him, and the bus came, and he couldn’t work up the courage to try again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's time for me to lift the curtain on the First Order, much as I'm tempted to make it nothing but sweet domestic fluff. But I gotta strike a better balance and induce Drama to stay true to the nature of these stories. I'll see what comes to me first!


	7. MEANWHILE

_She had never been inefficient when it came to filling out her paperwork before. It wasn't the most glamorous part of the job (and nothing about the job was glamorous), but the paperwork she'd done in the past had been without great emotional burden to slog through. The captain had never been required to deal with dead soldiers._

_Phasma sat alone at the wobbly desk with the dim-bulb lamp, scratching her scalp. The barracks the room behind her were silent, and she was certain that by now Hux and the rest of the administration had gone to bed back in the world outside. It's possible that Ren was having another bout of insomnia, but she prayed they not cross paths; his meditation had an aura of menace that Phasma did not have any desire to deal with that night. The night guards shut up in the walls of the compound were the only ones authorized to be awake. She would be breaking her own curfew for this report._

_There would be no possibility of retrieving the bodies from the wreck that happened the week prior. There never really was. With no plant already in the area and a rapid response from emergency crews, the timeframe was far too narrow for an extraction._ There was nothing to be done about it _, she thought,_ so not much sense in regret _. But she knew them. 405, 218, and 421. Two of 411's squadron and one higher-ranking combat operative. They had expected to promote 218 sometime very soon to a position like hers, directing new recruits in conditioning. 421 always carried a lucky stone and rolled it between his fingers when not at attention, or even when he was. 405 had shown great promise and had aspired to impress his superiors in every way, but Phasma had wondered if he would ever be quite cut out for a leadership position. The boy would now remain forever an ambiguity as a career cut short._

_The captain sighed down at the paper, head held in her hands, staring at the pen and unwilling to pick it up._

_Would 411 be best categorized as missing or killed in action? He had not died on impact, and in the minutes before the dash cam cut out, his voice is heard calling out for help. It rises sharply in panic at first, but after a while it dissolves into tears and softening cries. Phasma did not ever know 411 to be particularly talkative, but he treated authorities with a very different regard than his fellow soldiers. There were few memories of his voice, always very low and humbled._ 'Yes, Captain.' 'No, Captain.' _Never any questions. It was startling to hear him speak at all on the tape, and so pitifully. In all likelihood, he had expired before the ambulance even arrived._

_The moon hung in a crescent through the skylight above Captain Phasma's head. Even if he had survived, he would be nobody in the outside world, the very same way that she would be nobody without what she had worked to earn in this organization. If there was ever a plant sent to the city, they would know exactly where to look for a person with no proof of existence--in corners of streets and alleys, desperate to have a place again. A homeless man was no great threat to the security of the First Order._

_She picked up the pen. 411 would be "presumed dead."_


	8. two days later, 1:20am

Something told Finn that he was never doing to forget meeting that dog, slumped over his crutch in the doorway of Poe’s apartment. She hadn’t sprung upon Finn as Poe said she was prone to do with some visitors, but had peered at him from behind Poe’s legs, as if sensing and reciprocating Finn’s own shyness. Shy, to meet a dog! But to Finn’s credit, he’d never _met_ a dog on friendly terms. Dogs were simply not allowed in the First Order, and when he’d explained this to Poe, Poe declared that to be one of their greatest sins.

The nurse decided this called for a formal introduction. He scooped up the furball to bring her up to Finn’s height. “Beebee, this is Finn. Finn, BB-8.”

He tilted his head at the unusual name—even with his limited canine experience, Finn knew that was kind of an odd choice—but BB-8 looked at him with bright brown eyes, and her mouth open in a pant or a smile. She was absolutely adorable. Finn _actually_ felt a pang in his chest, and he could reach up to scratch her behind the ears without even thinking about it.

(At the very moment Finn’s heart was breaking for this dog, Poe’s was breaking for the sappy look on Finn’s face. It was very hard to leave that moment, for everyone—except BB-8, who needed to be let out and wiggled out of Poe’s arms almost immediately afterwards.)

Finn realized later that in a sense, BB-8 was his first new friend after he left the hospital, and the attachment was pure and instantaneous. Poe was only too eager to inform Finn all about their mutual buddy. She was the eighth one born of the litter and sickly, so when all her brothers and sisters got names (Benjamin, Butterscotch, Beatrice, Bernie, Bucky, and Bella Barker, respectively), they decided to simply call her BB-8 just in case she didn’t make it. But of course, Poe couldn’t stand for that, and his hero complex walked him home with a dog even if he really didn’t need one. The trouble was that he never thought of a good B-name for her because she had gotten so used to being called BB-8. So it stuck as it was, often shortened to BeeBee or just Bee. And as for the breed:

“She’s a mutt. They think some springer spaniel, since that’s what her mom looked like mostly, but there’s no way to tell for sure. She’s got the curly ears and the spots, but shorter fur, like a beagle or something.”

Poe’s vocabulary rang a little hollow in the ears of a guy who distinguished between dogs solely by size. But Poe knelt to ruffle the dog’s floppy ears that were a little like the hair on his own head, and she closed her eyes that were brown and bright like his, and Poe’s voice hushed a bit when he called BB-8 “one of a kind!”, and Finn knew that it didn’t really matter if he knew what Poe was talking about.

The dog was Poe’s constant companion, and Poe would respond to her yips and snuffles like they were having a conversation. Sometimes, Finn believed they were; she was smart enough to not always take Poe’s side in an argument, and Finn was glad for her third opinion that first night.

 

“I wouldn’t want to kick you out of your own bed—“

“You wouldn’t be, Finn! I don’t wanna leave _you_ out on the couch,” Poe said, as if that sounded any different. He stood there in his scrubs, keys in hand, and Finn couldn’t tell if he was worried that he was going to be late. Poe started to chuckle, dryly. “It’s not like we’d be using it at the same time.”

Finn pondered Poe’s sheets, the terrifying thought of his body leaving its essence in them, and his cognition short-circuited. He couldn’t do it, alone or... “Really, I’m fine here.”

Poe looked to BB-8. “Should I listen to him, Bee? I think I should insist.”

The dog looked up at Poe, very quiet for a moment, and padded over to Finn to nuzzle into the hand hanging at the perfect height for her furry head to rest under. Poe took this very personally and protested a disloyal dog, but conceded to letting Finn take the couch. Finn mouthed a ‘thank you’ to her when Poe had started for the linen closet, and the dog seemed to understand.

 

“Well, if the dog is taking your side, then I’m putting the blankets on it for you.” Poe offered a hand, and Finn took it—those steady hands were a perennial reminder of his first fresh set of memories.

“Fine. Are you gonna be late, though?”

Poe flashed a grin, and Finn found himself holding on tighter. “Not if I run. Don’t worry about me, ok?”

He sat Finn in the easy chair and squeezed his hand, subtle enough that an onlooker might not have noticed it, or noticed how Finn flexed his fingers like he could still feel the touch in them. He could.

 

* * *

 

 

Most days Poe would come home and zombie-walk through feeding the dog and taking her outside before passing out completely—but now he would stay alive a little longer, for breakfast. It was a very small thing, and an oddly domestic one for him, but having another person’s spoon scraping the bottom of a cereal bowl with him seemed to drown out whatever else was in his head. Truth be told, Poe hadn’t been sleeping well since Finn had woken up, and now that he was so _near_ it was even worse. But there was something addictive about this breed of madness, much more immediate and raw than the other sorts breeding in the pit of his brain.

Whenever he tried to name what it was stopping him from being forthcoming about his feelings, he couldn’t. Was it that Finn was much younger than him? Well, not _much_ younger—the time between them wasn’t insurmountable. Was he afraid of being rejected? Maybe it was what would come after: Finn really had nowhere to go but back where Poe had gotten him from if he didn’t want to stay any longer. The tension in the apartment would be unbearable either way.

Poe didn’t want to speculate on possibilities. He would either figure out an opportunity to be out with it already or drive himself mad, because Finn certainly wasn’t going to make the first move. There was a lot he still hadn’t seemed to pick up on yet, like—

 

“You’ve only got to work 3 days a week now?”

Every time he heard that, the bags under Poe Dameron’s eyes breathed a deeply happy sigh. “That’s actually my usual schedule. It’s just been these past couple that I’ve had to go in every day.”

“Why, though?” Finn’s spoon rested at the bottom of the bowl with a final _chink_ on the ceramic.

“Well…because I asked for more hours for a couple of weeks.”

“You’re telling me this was your choice.” Finn’s mouth hung like he’d just heard the dumbest joke of his life. Fair enough assessment, really.

Poe shrugged. “I didn’t ever say I was wise.”

A sharp laugh, impressed and pitied. “You’ve got me worried, Poe. You sleep like you’re dead.”

“That’s normal. When it’s half the day at work, the whole rest of it is pretty much shot.”

“But _every day_? Did you need the money?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

The light mocking tone faded out of Finn’s voice. “But I mean—are you doing ok? Should I be worried?”

Poe wet his lips and drew them together. This again? It’s sweet, but really, it was like Finn was underestimating him or something. “No, Finn, you don’t have to worry about me. The only person you’ve gotta worry about is you, babe.”

 

They both blinked. _Babe_. It had slipped so lightly off Poe’s tongue, like all the _buddy_ and _kid_ s he’d used on Finn. And it didn’t sound out of place to either.

Finn withdrew his voice a little. “I’m still curious. Why’d you do it? If you didn’t need the money that badly.”

Poe leaned forward on the table and drew a careful breath. “It’s ‘cause I’m a masochist, I guess. And I wanted to make sure I’d be seeing you. But then they let you go early, and it ended up having the opposite effect, and I’m kicking myself for it.” He locked his eyes onto Finn’s and couldn’t look away. This had to be the moment, right? This was as unsubtle as he’d ever been. Finn would realize that this whole time, it was all for him, and he’d say _yes, yes_ —

“What’s ‘masochist’?”

Nope.

Poe grumbled, “It means you get off on being hurt.” He rose from his chair without bothering to push it back under the table. “I’m goin’ to bed.”

BB-8 took this as an invitation to hop up on the empty seat and pant at Finn, who did not acknowledge her. He stared after Poe, mouth open but voice stuck in his throat, pushing at the sides of it.

 

* * *

 

 

Poe did not have to go in the next day. He let himself drift softly in and out of wakefulness as the sun pulled itself along the sky, finally catching up on the rest he had deprived of himself. When he woke for good and stopped gazing at the ceiling, the moon was well up, and it dawned upon him that he was starving. He stretched mouth and arms wide into a yawn and crept as quiet as he could manage to the kitchen.

Cereal (eaten standing at the window) was as good a midnight snack as any, given he didn’t have much else to eat in the pantry. He’d been too tired to get groceries. The dog probably had more to eat than the human did. _Hu_ mans _, plural_ , he remembered, and cast a glance back at the breathing shadow on the couch. Poe wondered if there was some way to apologize for being irritated that would mend the tear. Maybe he just needed to say that he had desperately missed a good night’s sleep and it had given him an edge—that was true, and would give him a chance to wipe the slate and wait for a better chance to explain himself. Finn wasn’t stupid, but it wasn’t fair of Poe to expect him to read his mind. Maybe on one of his other days off he could do it. Make something really delicious, or do something really cheesy. Flowers, maybe.

Finn bolted upright, gasping and panting like he’d been held underwater, and Poe nearly fumbled the cereal bowl all over the floor. He ditched it on the kitchen table and was at Finn’s side in a second, his little reverie replaced by images of popped stitches or re-fractured bones. In the dark, his hands found the planes of Finn’s cheeks.

“What is it? Are you hurt?”

Finn was still breathless, but he closed his eyes and started to come back into himself. “N-No, I’m ok.”

“Nightmare?” Poe brushed a thumb over Finn’s cheek and caught a bead of cold sweat.

“I think so?” He focused on the foreign warmth of the palms that edged his jaw. This was real, not an echo like the voices that lingered in his ears. He swallowed down a thick throat and looked with trepidation to Poe. “Can you dream memories?”

Even in the dark, Poe could see that the kid looked haunted.

Finn lowered his gaze, pensive. “Or maybe not exactly a memory. But I know it all really happened; not sure how I know, but I know. I don’t know if I was there to see it all—my brain might be making stuff up. But I knew him. I had a friend…I think I know why I wanted to leave.”

He dropped his hands to Finn’s shoulders and hesitated to ask. “What happened?”

Finn fixed on the middle distance and hesitated to answer.

 

“We were doing a raid on something. I don’t know where we were, but it looked like this old abandoned building that people had been squatting in. I don’t know why they had us in there. I don’t think they ever told us why. They had us split off into teams of four, and I knew all the guys with me, but there was one guy I kinda kept an eye on. He wasn’t as fast as the rest of us and I kept falling back to make sure he was ok. I was supposed to leave him behind if he couldn’t keep up, but I was worried for him. And this wasn’t like a simulation, either, so there really was a chance he could get hurt this time. We all had guns and they’d taught us how to use them, so if he had it ready in time he would’ve been able to defend himself, but he just wasn’t getting to cover in time and we had no idea where fire would be coming at us from.

“I started going on ahead when he told me he would be ok, and the rest of us all made it through in time. But all the people in there were waiting until the last second to fire, and he hadn’t gotten to cover yet…I saw him fall and I didn’t think, I was running out there to grab him and pull him away ‘cause I thought—I thought maybe it had just gotten his arm or his leg or something and he could make it. But I had pulled him between a couple of giant crate-type things where they can’t reach you, and I looked, and he had this giant bloodstain right through the middle, and where I’d pulled him there was—h-he left a trail, he was bleeding so much. I-I think I knew he probably wasn’t gonna make it if it was that much blood, but I was just stuck there staring at him and I had never seen anybody die. It had only been training before that. They tell you there’s a good chance you’ll die, but they say if you do it’s your own fault, basically. And I was trying to figure out how he’d done anything to ever deserve that. And he didn’t, he didn’t…I was sitting there watching him die and I had to get up and walk away when he was gone like nothing had happened. We don’t go back for the dead.

“I just…When we were supposed to open fire on the squatters I couldn’t do it. My finger wouldn’t move. All those people—they had shot at us, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t know why we had to shoot at them now, too. I kept seeing his eyes—we had to wear scarves over our faces so we wouldn’t be recognized or identified later or anything, but I could see his eyes, when he died, and I kept seeing them. All the squatters had his eyes. If they didn’t—i-if they didn’t fall right away, they went all bleary and half-open, and they all looked like him. And I couldn’t do anything. I was just stuck there, watching them.”

 

The silence lingered, tight as a bowstring, and Poe had no idea how to break it. Finn was all softness and kindness, even raised with a gun in his hand, and he couldn’t kill anybody or leave them behind. And now he had finally recalled who he was, and it was frightening him, and Poe was just stuck there to watch with no words left to say. He had begun to scrape his mind for some platitude to fill the void when Finn closed the small space between them and wound his arms around Poe’s waist.

It nearly threw him off-balance, and he felt a flutter rise in his stomach, where Finn’s head had nestled. He’d always been a little bit soft at the middle and a little bit miffed at genetics for that gift, but Finn didn’t seem to mind. His fuzzy head brushed a little against Poe’s arms, and Poe almost smiled. _Poor kid. He’s had a rough week. Maybe even rougher than me._

“Poe?” His voice was a little muffled in the fabric of Poe’s undershirt.

“Yeah?”

“Why’d you come and get me?”

The flutters beneath Finn’s ear returned, looming, as if they were willing and able to get even stronger. “’Cause I had to make sure you were ok. And because I wanted to see you.”

“You wanted to see me,” Finn echoed.

“I wanted to _be_ with you.”

Finn looked up, and the smoke in the hush of his voice made Poe lightheaded. “You mean, like this?”

The corner of Poe’s mouth ticked up and conjured the crow’s feet around his eyes, and Finn thought the couch had dropped out from under him. “Yeah. Like this.”


	9. MEANWHILE

_Huxtable, Incorporated Headquarters had a way of looming over the city despite not being the tallest building present. Perhaps it was the way the building itself seemed to have broad shoulders; the slope down the back with its one-way glass suggested a flowing cape that reached its foot. This, in combination with its sponsorship of several facilities (including the police department's annual drives), made HuxCorp a lord of the metropolis._

_The old portrait of Regis Huxtable hung in the penthouse office, facing the wall of glass that gave a broad view of his kingdom. Though the man had passed, his eyes still seemed to glint in the harsh smog-red glow of the setting sun as it slunk back behind the watercolor horizon. Armitage always forgot to keep from looking at the portrait and regretted it every time. The oil-paint eyes held too many ghosts, like if the energy in the room were high enough his father could step out of the frame and reprimand him for not doing enough to secure the company's, or the First Order's, affairs._

_Armitage's mouth twitched into a familiarly-wrought scowl. Governor Tarkin really did teach his father everything he knew. Not like General Hux himself was any different in that sense--but if he would be greater than them both in due time, neither of them would pester his thoughts for much longer. Perhaps once troops could be put on the ground in full force in Takodana..._

_Hux's profile cut as sharp a sillouhette as the building he caught the last rays of sunlight inside. A grandness gilt the edges of his hard jaw and square forehead, as if the electricity buzzing beneath it was manifesting. The stage was set. Sway Balmorra into submission to Nar Shaddaa by way of cutting off its window in Takodana, and the First Order obtains a stronger double-hold on tech development than ever. With nobody to compete with, they'll finally be motivated to move forward on the Full-Stage Replication project, and Ren--no, SNOKE (Praise Be!) will be pleased with the progress. Hopefully pleased enough to overlook Nar Shaddaa's actions for as long as it will take for Hux to "forget" their agreement of deliberate shortsightedness. Chaos is a necessary evil on the path to order, but never permissible._

_Still, something beyond the voices of his father and mentor were nagging him behind the clean, deliberate lines of his plan. Amidala Memorial sat below, unimpressive and flat from this height. If 411 had survived, that is where he would have ended up. Phasma had dithered about filing that report, a snag that vaguely annoyed Hux, but not so much that it drove him to significant distraction. But after a time, it grew in the back of his skull at buzzed like a gnat. The "_ presumed dead _" was what did it, and the mysteriously convenient timing of the dash cam dying out. The captain had not made neat and clean what she normally had, as if she hoped by permission of ambiguity that 411 would turn up alive. The thought was tenderly laughable; if the unit survived by some miracle, he would be forced to become a transient, effectively invisible. Searching for a homeless young man among the hordes of others would take far too many resources, especially at this stage of advancement. Phasma always ended up showing her sentiment in the end, and where it normally rolled off the General's back, it now stung. There was no time to be spared for a single soldier when the Order was so close to being able to have a swath of perfect soldiers manufactured for them as they needed._

_Armitage Huxtable's pale fingers intertwined with each other at the small of his straight back. He could spare one second-rate plant, more to reassure himself than anything else that there was nothing to be found in the buildings below._

_His pocket hummed. Hux clicked open the phone and blanched at the message:_

**Kylo Ren**

Felt a disturbance. Remember we are not invincible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (My apologies to any *serious* fans reading this--I've done my best scouring Wookieepedia about these planets-turned-countries for sake of integrity, but I have no idea if they have any established relationship or where they are relative to each other in the universe beyond a vague general idea. I've only ever watched the movies, I'm afraid, and it's easy to get lost in this galaxy. Hopefully you'll forgive my cluelessness about the lore in favor of my NOT-cluelessness about how all of the characters sit relative to each other in this universe.)  
> (Also, altered the history of the First Order a little bit for the sake of the AU: this is a kind of modern Earth AU, so at this point clones like Boba Fett would not have been used in the past, or even possible yet, and the First Order wants to employ them in keeping with its need for a large amount of battle fodder and its desire for a "pure world.")


End file.
